Beth couldn't sleep.

She'd woken up some time ago, though it was impossible to guess exactly how long. She was in the Lord's bedroom at Rock-on-Clyde again — wouldn't have been her first choice, this fancy noble shite was a bit much, but the rooms had been saved for her, so, she'd been tired at the time and hadn't felt like arguing. There were no windows in here, and the lights were out, very dark. She had a feeling it hadn't been very long, she'd tried to get to sleep again, tossing and turning in the big, very soft, luxuriously smooth, warm, and...

Was it possible for something to be too comfortable? She hadn't really been thinking about it too hard at the time, she'd been very sleepy, too dead on her feet to really even notice the accommodations.

She'd woken up in Đà Nẵng yesterday...er, or maybe it was the day before now? She didn't know, time zones were confusing. Anyway, she'd woken up, had a rushed breakfast before taking a portkey pretty much first thing in the morning. She'd landed somewhere in central Asia, but she'd only stopped there briefly, soon later she was taking a second portkey that brought her straight to Lyneham...where it'd been the middle of the fucking night — like two in the morning, maybe? By the time the sun was rising, and the people at Lyneham were getting going, it felt like the middle of the day to her...

The last time she'd checked her watch, they'd been lingering talking after dinner, it was around eight in the evening local time — but her watch said it was two in the morning. No wonder she'd barely been able to follow the conversation by the end, and the wine really didn't help...

She didn't think she'd slept much. She was too used to rising with the sun, an hour or two later if she wasn't on that morning or if there'd been drinking the previous night. And even then, she usually woke up around the same time, she just didn't do anything right away, lingering in 'bed' and taking the excuse to laze around for a bit. Most of the time she didn't have, like, alarms or anything, her body had just gotten used to waking up at the right time regardless, around sunrise...

...in Vietnam. Which she was pretty sure was, like, fucking midnight or some shite in Britain. She'd woken up, despite the fact that she couldn't have gotten much sleep in the first place, and she tried to relax, but the electric tension in her limbs, she was supposed to be getting up, she couldn't...fucking...

The bed wasn't helping — was it possible for something to be too comfortable? It was nice, of course, but... She'd seriously considered moving down to the rug, or taking a pillow and a blanket and kipping out in the gardens, just— She didn't know, somehow being all soft and smooth just felt really grating for some reason. Got too used to pretty shitty accommodations, she guessed, to the point that comfortable felt un-comfortable now, fucking ridiculous...

With a sigh, she reached for the bedside table, blindly groped for her watch, a tap of the face lighting up the display. Quarter after nine, she'd actually managed to sleep in. Grimacing, she reached for her wand, and cast a time charm. That would give her raw solar time, granted, which wasn't quite the same as the muggle clock...

It was three in the morning here.

For fuck's sake...

Oh well, there was no way she was getting any more sleep at what her body still seemed to be convinced was mid-morning, there was no point in trying any longer. The post had come in right before she'd left Đà Nẵng, she had some letters she could write while she was waiting for the rest of the house to wake up.

Beth was a little disappointed, on reaching the bathroom, to be reminded there wasn't a shower. She didn't really need one right now anyway, but she still didn't like having baths. Whatever. She gathered up her impossible fucking hair with one hand, once she had it all pulled up in the same direction she chopped it off with a single severing charm. Dumping the mass of annoying red curls in her sink, she covered the bowl with a bubble charm, and then set it on fire. It only took a couple seconds before it was all burned away, Beth cleared away the residue and the smoke with a quick cleaning charm.

She took a moment to examine herself in the mirror — her scars visible, since she'd stripped down to her pants for bed and hadn't bothered getting dressed again yet — running her hand through her much-shortened hair, reduced to fluttery little wisps around her head. It wasn't entirely even, since she'd just done one clean cut by hand, but it was messy enough you couldn't really tell. Besides, she didn't think she was going anywhere today anyway.

It took her a little while to get dressed, Beth spending more time poking through her trunk and drawers and stuff than was probably necessary. She hadn't seen any of this stuff in months, she'd kind of forgotten what she owned? A lot of plain trousers and tee shirts and jumpers in muted colours, probably rather baggier than they needed to be — which made sense, Beth wasn't really surprised. She didn't think her preferences had changed that much, so whatever. She did have some things she'd picked up while in Vietnam, but it was so bloody cold up here, probably too flimsy if she wanted to go outside today...

After sorting through her things, she pulled on a pair of muggle denims, a vest, and a jumper, and padded out on bare feet into the rest of the huge bloody manor, her letters and some paper and a pen in one arm. Some tea would be nice, um, she was pretty sure the kitchen was this way...

She was in the old part of the house, the shiny polished rosey wood vanished in favour of plain greyish stone — the original structure built during the lifetimes of the first Potters, incrementally added on to since, still home to the kitchen and the laundry and the baths and the library tower — when she saw lights coming out from the old dining hall. It had been the original Great Hall, where you'd have guests over for proper mediaeval feasts and shite, but as social expectations changed and Rock-on-Clyde was expanded, it'd fallen out of use in favour of the far fancier, marble-and-gold formal halls down the hill to the south. (Like, ridiculously fancy and huge, the kind of place you could hold formal balls in, Beth couldn't imagine why she'd ever use the fucking thing.) The old Great Hall had instead become a dining-slash-common room used by the live-in domestic staff...but then the Potters had gotten elves instead, and it suddenly hadn't had any purpose at all. Supposedly the elves would use it as a space to arrange dishes and shite when hosting big formal dinners before popping everything over at once, but that was pretty much it.

Since Beth, Hermione, and the Weasleys had moved into Rock-on-Clyde, they'd taken over the largely unused space as a dining room — there was a nicer one connected to the family rooms, but it seemed like a bit much to just have breakfast in or whatever. And it was far more convenient, since the kitchens were just a door over right over there, and it was also close to the library, so whoever (usually Hermione) had easy access to reading material.

This was where people would gather when it was breakfast time, but there shouldn't be anyone here now? She wouldn't be surprised if the morning baking had already started — Rock-on-Clyde was still hosting a bunch of refugees, while Beth had been out of the country many of them recruited to do various farming jobs on Potter land in the area, they had a whole team that took care of the cooking for everyone — but there shouldn't be anyone in the dining room yet, she didn't think? Unless the morning cooking shift were having tea before getting started...but the colours of the lights were off...

Beth wavered for a moment — running into the strangers she was sort of putting up was always vaguely uncomfortable — before peeking inside. It was a large rectangular space, about twice as long as it was wide, dominated by a pair of long tables down the middle, the wood ancient-looking, nicked and stained. Walls and floor in the same grey stone as everything else in the oldest part of the manor, the floor hidden in a strip by a long reddish rug, overhead a triangular peaked ceiling braced with wooden rafters. There was a big hearth in the middle of one of the long walls, much taller and wider than necessary, the sort of thing they would have roasted whole pigs and shite in back in the day — it was kept lit, but the bed of crackling orange flames were produced by an enchantment now, no actual fuel necessary. There would have been decorative touches once upon a time, but as the room fell out of use they'd gradually been removed, a somewhat basic-looking (very old) reproduction of the Potter arms over the hearth the only obvious bit left. Since Beth had left last autumn, there were chalkboards posted to the walls in a couple places, marked with people's schedules for the week, notices about things going on at the manor, chores that needed to get done, that sort of thing. It was mostly still rather plain and empty-looking though.

Last night, she'd noticed that there was a desk in a corner that hadn't been there before, with a comfortable-looking muggle office chair. There were a couple ceramic boxes around, looking rather like Hermione's radios but different shapes and sizes, some other equipment and books Beth couldn't identify. She hadn't asked at the time, but apparently that was Hermione's desk: she was sitting there now, in her sleep shorts and a fuzzy jumper, her hair a flyaway frizzy mess. There was some kind of illusion projected over the boxes, showing a diagramme and some text...

Was this one of Hermione's computers? She'd mentioned that they used illusions to project images, instead of the bulky boxy screens muggle computers used. Beth had never seen one of these yet, neat.

"Looks like I'm not— Oh shite, sorry." Hermione had startled pretty badly when Beth spoke, jumping hard enough her chair creaked, one of the blocks of text in the illusion whipping by...

"It's okay, I just didn't hear you coming." She reached out to poke one of the blocks of text, dragging it down with a finger, the lines paging by with each brush. "...Found it, okay. Good morning, Beth," she said, finally turning to her with a smile. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Yeah, my body's still on Vietnam time, apparently — used to waking up at sunrise, but that's the middle of the bloody night here. You?"

"Mm, I woke up to use the toilet and I had an idea, had to check something... What time is it, anyway? I didn't check."

Beth felt herself smiling, couldn't help it. This was hardly the first time Hermione had woken up in the middle of the night and gotten distracted with some nerdy shite — sometimes when she was woken up by a nightmare at school she'd find Hermione quietly reading in bed or scribbling away at her desk... She didn't know how Hermione got by with so little sleep, that had to be magic somehow. It was just such a Hermione thing to do, that was all. "A bit after three in the morning, I think."

Hermione grimaced. "Ugh. I'm going to be feeling that later. Maybe I can sneak in a nap after lunch..."

"You and me both — though maybe I should try to stick it out, force my sleep schedule to adjust. Might be easier if there were windows in my bedroom, this bloody place..." Beth set her bundle of papers down on the table, nearest to Hermione's little work desk. "Hey, you think the elves will lose it if I camp out in the gardens?"

"No, but I imagine they'll bring you far more pillows and blankets than you really need. Don't like your room?"

Beth shook her head, giving Hermione a sheepish sort of smile. "I have discovered it's possible for something to be too comfortable. I was going to put on tea, maybe steal some biscuits or whatever's lying around — did you want some?"

"Oh, that's be lovely, thank you."

She'd half-expected the kitchens to be busy already, but apparently Beth was up early enough that the morning baking hadn't even started yet — there were a few women here, huddled up muttering to each other over cups of tea, but that was it, nothing was on yet. They assumed she was showing up for work at first, a new person they didn't know...so Beth told them who she was, and immediately regretted it. There was a lot of thanking her for putting up them and their families in her absurdly overlarge fucking manor, and from one of them for actually saving her life — happened to be one of the people she and Sirius had rescued in Manchester, apparently — and they'd heard the lady of the house was back, if they knew she would be up so early in the morning they would have had something ready! They really didn't need to make a fuss over her, seriously, she was just looking for some tea, and maybe a few biscuits or whatever was around...

While the water was heating up, one of the women rather sheepishly asked if it was normal in the magical world for fifteen-year-old girls to go off to war. So Beth had to admit that, no, it wasn't actually, she was just very stubborn, useless at practically everything else, and more than a little bit mad. She was pretty sure they thought she was joking about that last bit — they were obviously trying to be all polite to the lady of the house or whatever the fuck, they probably wouldn't have laughed if they'd realised she was being completely serious.

Eventually, Beth was leaving with a tea tray, the pot and a plate of biscuits and a little bowl of fresh berries. (Taken out of the gardens and greenhouses here, they had a pretty constant supply of berries and stuff, thanks to magical cheating.) Feeling rather flustered, honestly, that conversation had just been uncomfortable. She was used to people having no idea who she was — some mages even way over in Vietnam had heard of the story of that Hallowe'en, but just as a magical curiosity and not really a big deal anyone cared about — going back to people giving a damn again was just weird. Especially when it wasn't even over Girl Who Lived stuff, those women were muggles, just, letting them live in her house, so they had a place to stay and were safe while everything was going to shite...

Which just seemed like such a fucking basic thing to do — she had the huge fucking manor and whatever, super empty, and people didn't have homes to go back to, so why the fuck not. And she owned a bunch of land for stupid reasons, people needed food, and there were plenty of refugees stuck at Rock-on-Clyde with nothing better to do, so. She hadn't been the one to set it up, Dumbledore or Diggle or whoever had managed that, but she had been asked about it at some point, and, obviously that was the thing to do? She didn't understand how this was a question. People acting all grateful for not being kicked out on their arses was, just, weird, she didn't know how to respond to that.

She didn't understand why the Potters before her had just left all this shite empty, and not found something to do with it — not just Rock-on-Clyde, but a bunch of other properties they had dotted all over the place, lots of it hadn't been fully used. Seemed so wasteful to her.

(And also extremely shitty, considering how fucked the situation for some poor people could be in magical Britain, but she guessed that was aristocracy for you.)

Trying to shake off the funny mix of embarrassment and guilt and whatever the fuck, Beth slipped back into the dining room. "And I'm back. Did you want your tea over there, or...?"

Hermione finished up some bit of whatever she was doing, and then flipped a switch, the illusions winking out, before joining Beth at the table. The tea was fine, if not particularly great...though, honestly she wasn't sure how much of that was due to her simply being used to green tea now. This was definitely red t– er, black tea, she meant — a lot of Asian languages actually called it red tea (though in tiếng Việt the colour word actually meant pink, which was kind of funny) — and that wasn't nearly so common where she'd been for over half a year now. Apparently it was a shipping thing? The process of making black tea made it keep its flavour for a lot longer, so, places further away from where the plants were actually grown were unlikely to have ever been exposed to plain fresh green tea before modern transportation became a thing. The leaves for this were apparently grown in greenhouses here in (magical) Britain, so they could get green tea no problem, black tea was just what people here were more used to, so. Green tea was milder, yes, but it was also... It was different, that was all. She was going to have to get used to black tea again...

She'd started taking green tea without any sweetener or anything months ago now, but this stuff could definitely use it — thankfully, honey was easy to get their hands on, thanks to mages keeping bees all over the place to help with pollination (and also make mead). The biscuits were pretty plain shortbread, nothing exciting, but it was edible, so whatever. As they set themselves up, Beth mostly just whined about the tea, and not being used to it anymore, a little bit about what tea was like in Vietnam...

Taking a sip, she tried not to grimace — it wasn't bad, just...different. She fucking well better get used to it before too long, she barely drank anything else. Maybe she could find something to add to it, like the flowery herbal shite they liked to do back in Vietnam, that might help... "So anyway, what are you working on over there?"

"Oh, um, datacentre architecture. It's, ah... I'm not sure how I would explain it, exactly, there's so many steps necessary to build up to it..."

"The short, for idiots version, then," Beth said, smiling behind her cup. (Hermione being Hermione, that was all.)

Looking a little sheepish, Hermione shrugged. "Yes, well. Designing big computers to store lots of information, for universities or governments or the like. Also tend to be powerful systems that can be used to run complex models, experiments — those aren't necessarily the same function for digital computers, but it's trivial to set up for both with our system. Um. There are some refinements we're working on, to start building more of them — a lot of important computing infrastructure has already been shut down, due to lack of power or supplies, they'll need replacements — the idea I had was a, um. What do you know about the internet?"

"...The what?"

Hermione's lips twitched, shook her head. "Never mind. Think something like our radios, but instead of transmitting someone's voice, you're transmitting data. Information, whatever it is, documentation, maps, images, video..."

"Right." Beth didn't really know enough about computers and whatever else to get why that was important, but she'd take Hermione's word for it. "Had an idea on the toilet and you had to rush off and get it down right away?"

"Well, I wouldn't have been able to get back to sleep — my brain would be too busy— Ah, it's part of the enchantments that decide which other computer you're talking to. It's complicated. But, you know me, I can't sleep if I've got something buzzing away in here, I had to get it down. Though I wasn't actually working on the idea I had, I wrote down notes for that pretty quickly, I got distracted by something else..."

Beth just smiled, took another sip of tea without comment (ugh). That was Hermione being Hermione, all right.

"So, I'm helping design the magical internet, that's what I'm up to. What's this you got here," Hermione asked, reaching over to shuffle some of Beth's papers, "letters?"

"Yeah, um, I checked the post office just before I left. I read them all while I was travelling, but I haven't had a chance to reply yet." They were mostly all out of their envelopes, loose sheets in multiple languages. She picked up one, the paper dyed a pale blue, written in rainbow colour-changing ink, the hand loose and curly, some of the ends twisted into tiny little doodles of flowers and hearts. "Luna — she knew I would be coming home, timed it so I'd have something to read on the way, bloody Seers." This one also happened to be a little private, so she tucked under the blank papers for her responses. "And the other English ones here, um, this one's Lavender and Parvati, this one's from Angie — telling me she wouldn't be able to make it yesterday, you know. Um, the Vietnamese ones — those are the ones in Latin letters but with all the funny accent marks and stuff — those are mostly all from people I was stuck in a shelter with for like a month, um..."

"Is that Russian?" Hermione asked, picking up one of the papers, and—

"No, don't—" She cut herself off, her hand freezing halfway through reaching to snatch the page away from Hermione. "Um, I forget, can you even read Russian?"

"Oh, no, not really. I can read the alphabet, but it's mostly just gibberish to me. I'm sorry, is this one private?"

"Um. Yeah, a bit." It was from Verushka, and it got a little, er, racy at points...

"All right, sorry." Hermione set it back down, on top of the second page, tucked them under some blank pages — trying to be considerate of Beth being sensitive about it, she guessed, which was thoughtful but unnecessary. Sometimes Beth forgot that other people didn't know all the languages she did, it was kind of silly to get nervous about it in the first place. "That's quite a few letters you've got, you went off to the other side of the world and got popular on me all of a sudden."

Taking a bite of a biscuit, Beth rolled her eyes. "Popular, honestly," she muttered, half-muffled by shortbread. "It's just a few letters, er..." She counted quick, the three in English over there, Verushka's, these one, two, three... "Okay, eight letters in like a week is kind of a lot, I guess. You know how it is, you get stuck with people for months at a time, you make friends."

"I don't know how it is, really," Hermione said, with a wry sort of smile. "I've never been great at making friends...at least not with people my own age, I guess? There are some people at work I... Well, it's easier when they're not cruel, catty children."

Beth had hardly ever been great at making friends either — she hadn't exactly had much practice before Hogwarts — but she got the point. "I bet it helps that you're all a bunch of nerds working on nerdy shite."

"Yes, well, actually having things in common with people does smooth things over a bit." A bit of a bouncing lilt slipping into her voice, lips twitching more toward a smirk, "But I'm certainly not getting any private letters from anyone."

"Gave that away like an idiot, didn't I?" She felt a hint of warmth on her cheeks from the suggestion on private — even a rather accurate suggestion, because Verushka had apparently been amusing herself. But, more than faintly embarrassed, she was starting to feel a little nervous. If Hermione kept on this topic, Beth would probably be mentioning the whole gay thing at some point — even if she didn't press, this would be a good time to mention it, so Beth should probably take the opportunity to do it herself — and that was a kind of intimidating thought. Which was completely irrational, honestly, she didn't really think that Hermione would freak out about it, but, feelings weren't always rational...

"I already suspected there might be something going on, with the way you pointedly didn't comment on certain things yesterday. Or, it seemed pointed to me, at least." Picking a strawberry out of the bowl, Hermione drawled, "Also, your face went very red when Alicia jokingly asked if you've also been out in the woods...getting screwed, I think are the literal words she used."

Beth bit out a harsh groan, leaning to the side away from her plate so she could plonk her head down on her arms. Partially because she could feel her face going red, ugh, and also just...intentionally breaking eye contact. She suspected it'd be easier to get through this conversation if she didn't have to look at Hermione the whole time — self-conscious, looking for the slightest expression and working herself up into paranoia... "That was just one time." She frowned, immediately second-guessing herself. "Er, okay twice."

There was a funny noise from across the table, a cough and a laugh at once. "Ah. I see. So, you have...?" Hermione trailed off, even without looking at her face Beth could feel the awkwardness.

"...had sex? Yeah. Bunch of times now."

"Oh. Um." There was a short pause, a clink of Hermione doing something with her tea cup. "Oh, sorry, I just went quiet there, thinking. I'm surprised, is all, I thought... Well, don't take this the wrong way, but it's kind of hard to imagine you dating? Though I suppose there probably isn't a lot of dating going on at army camps..."

Beth snorted. "Yeah, no, not exactly. Plenty of screwing around, though." This position was starting to get uncomfortable, leaning over at an awkward angle, so she pushed herself upright again. Poking through the bowl of berries, mostly to give herself something else to focus on, she said, "Especially with Vietnam being a Communist country and all, and the Soviets sending people to help. Big on the whole equality of the sexes thing, Communists — there were always women around."

"Yes, that makes sense. I wasn't— I didn't think there wouldn't be..." Hermione trailed off, awkwardly — now that Beth was sitting up, it was way more obvious that her discomfort was at least partially just with the topic itself. Of course, Beth was very sure she'd never even kissed anyone, and she couldn't think of any boys (besides Ron) who she even talked to? And she was probably straight, if the stuff with Lockhart was any indication, so. And Hermione could be very shy about stuff sometimes, being uncomfortable with the subject wasn't a big shock. "Um, I'm just... I missed things. You went away, for months, and I missed things. That's all."

Okay, ouch. Beth grimaced her way through chewing on a dewberry, trying to figure out where the hell to go with this. "Yeah, I, er... I thought of... I didn't want to write about it, and, I didn't know what you would think about, um. I figured it was better to do it in person."

"There's no reason to hide it from me, Beth. You've known me for years now, do you really think I'm the sort of person who'd judge you for enjoying yourself?"

A little shocked laugh jumped up her throat at the phrasing, almost making her spill her tea. Forcefully setting her cup back down with a clatter, she coughed, "Ugh, you're killing me here, enjoying yourself." She cleared her throat, ach, she got some tea up the back of her nose... "Though, sex is nice, turns out. I've been thinking about it, you know, and I'm considering becoming a big damn slag?"

Hermione scoffed, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a second — but Beth didn't believe it, she didn't miss the subtle flicker of a smile at her lips. "Honestly, Beth..."

"A tramp, a floozy, a moll, a slut, a minx, a tart—"

"Stop it, come on," Hermione huffed, grinning and trying not to laugh, aimlessly waving across the table, "ridiculous..."

"—doxy, strumpet, a woman of light virtue—"

"Oh you're just being silly now!"

"Yeah, sorry, I'm done." She broke to take a sip of tea, giving Hermione a moment to fight down the breathless giggles. "I changed my mind, though, I think I'm going with minx instead. Has a better feel to it than slag, don't you think?"

With an exasperated roll of her eyes, that didn't at all match the silly smile on her face, Hermione said, "I hardly think it matters, does it? Besides, whenever I hear that word, the first thing I think of are minks. The animal, I mean."

"But they're cute, right?"

"Well, sure. Call yourself a minx then if you want, I guess. So tell me about him!" she said, perking up a little, cupping her tea in both hands and grinning across the table. "About your Soviet boyfriend, I mean — I know I was acting odd for a moment there, I really am so curious. Though, is boyfriend really the right term? I suppose it's, um, complicated..."

"Of course you're curious, you're you. And no, that's, um, probably not the right word." For more than one reason, really. "It's not just the one, there were, er, three people."

Hermione's eyes went wide. "What, at the same time?"

"Ha! No, Hermione, honestly! Come on, I'm not that much of a minx," teasingly, smirking, making sure it was clear she wasn't offended.

"I know, I was only joking." She was pretty sure Hermione had been at least partly serious — she had missed things, after all, how was she supposed to know — but yes, also joking. "Tell me about them, then. What are their names? I'm guessing they weren't all Soviets, these letters in, um..."

"Tiếng Việt, yeah. Um." Beth hesitated, but just for a second — it was going to be fine, Hermione wasn't going to freak out, there was really no reason to be nervous, at all. She sucked in a quick breath. "First was Ianin, then Diệu, and..." She folded over papers, tapped the letter in somewhat messily-scrawled cursive Russian. "...this is from the last one, Verushka. Ah, Vera Smirnova, I mean." Verushka was kind of a cutesy nickname, Beth was allowed to call her that but Hermione probably shouldn't. Anyway, Ianin and Diệu might not seem obviously feminine to Hermione — and Beth was pretty sure Diệu was even gender-neutral anyway — but Vera Smirnova definitely would.

"Oh!" Hermione chirped, her eyes widening a little. "Soviet girlfriend then, my mistake. Were the other two women as well? Um, it was Ianin, and, er..."

"Diệu." That might be an odd one for Hermione to pronounce. Beth didn't think it was that difficult — in fact, it sounded pretty close to how she'd pronounce zeal in the shitty southern accent she'd grown up speaking most of the time (when she wasn't copying Petunia's fake stilted RP or Vernon's weird unidentifiable blended thing) — but those vowels were crammed together in a way that was awkward for English speakers to get in one syllable. And there was the tone too, of course.

"Right, um, Dìu." Eh, close enough. "I can't tell if those are feminine names or not."

Trying to act casual, Beth nodded. "They are." She moved to pick up a berry, but felt jittery enough from nerves that she wasn't sure she could actually eat it right now, ended up just turning it in her fingers instead.

"Right. Well, tell me about them then, I'm curious."

Beth blinked, glanced up at Hermione. She seemed entirely unconcerned, leaning forward with her elbows on the table, teacup held with both hands in front of her chin, smiling at her. "That's it?"

Hermione frowned, just a little. "What's it?"

"I mean..." She just gestured vaguely, not sure what words she was going for here. "I just thought, you know..."

"Oh, was this why you didn't want to write about it, wait to tell me in person?"

"Um, yeah, kinda..."

"...Did you really think I would react badly? I mean, I—" Hermione glanced to the side for a second, before turning back to Beth with a crooked smile. "No offence intended, of course, but it's not exactly a big surprise? You have seen you, right?"

Beth rolled her eyes. "Yeah, yeah, very funny. I guess it's really obvious now, since I've started chopping this shite off..." Her hand came up to her hair, a little self-consciously, she forced herself to stop, forced out a huff. "Even look like a dyke now, don't I?"

"A bit, yes," Hermione drawled, sounding somewhat amused.

"And yeah, that's what I was worried about, I... I didn't really think you'd freak out about it or anything? But, you know." She shrugged. "Feelings are stupid. Can't help it sometimes." She popped the berry she'd been playing with in her mouth, mostly just so she couldn't keep rambling.

"Isn't that the truth." She glanced away for a second, probably thinking about something in particular — Beth couldn't guess what, but Hermione had had enough irritating spats with their roommates over the years that it could really be anything. "For the record, it doesn't bother me at all that you're a lesbian. It makes no difference to me whatsoever who you're dating — er, as long as you're not being hurt, of course, I'm certain I'm going to worry about that sometimes, but. If that helps to hear at all."

"...It does, yeah."

Before she could figure out what to say next, Hermione went on, kind of half-wincing. "Though, when I think about it, I do worry that I might have been, um... It didn't occur to me I should be careful about, you know...mixed signals?"

"Oh, that," Beth grumbled. "Seriously, don't worry about it, it's fine. I'm over it."

Hermione's eyebrows arched up. "Over it?"

"Fuck." She hadn't meant to admit that. "I meant, it's not a problem, there are no mixed signals or whatever, it— When I say I love you I mean it in, like, a sisterly sort of way. You know."

"Oh good. Same for me, of course. Just checking."

"Right, good. Now that that's out of the way, can we cut off the excruciatingly uncomfortable part of this conversation, and go back to the awkwardly uncomfortable part?"

Hermione smiled at her, soft and a little crooked — affectionate, but kind of laughing at her on the inside at the same time. Not an uncommon expression for her, really, Beth recognised it instantly. "All right. If this is too uncomfortable for you, we can stop and talk about something else. I'm just so curious! You know me. So, tell me about...Ianin? Ianin was first, right? Honestly, I guess I don't even know if you've kissed a girl before — when I think about it, you and Katie Bell are kind of, well..."

"Noticed that, did you. We haven't, but we have been...kind of dancing around it for a while. Um." Probably not worth bringing up that what had stopped anything from happening between them was mostly that Beth still hadn't really been okay with the being queer thing. Wouldn't accomplish anything, she was over it now anyway — they had rather more important things to worry about than who Beth wanted to snog. "Yeah, Ianin was first. Ah... After we cleared out the landing in the north, I told you about that part, there was a big party, and, er...

"Well, honestly, we were both very drunk, it just kind of happened. Oops?"

"Oh, Beth..."

Double post, woo.

That's the last scene I had prewritten, I'm currently working on the next one now. Scenes will be posted as I finish them going forward.